


144. nobody's home

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [200]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen, Imaginary Friends
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-16
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-09-17 21:28:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9346679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: Sarah knows she made Helena up.





	

Sarah knows she made Helena up. Some people think their imaginary friends are real, but Sarah doesn’t; she can’t see Helena, or touch Helena, and nobody else even knows that she’s there. But it makes Sarah feel better to pretend, so she does.

She is six years old.

Her latest foster family goes to bed early, so Sarah sneaks downstairs and watches terrible gory action movies on their television with the sound turned down very low. She likes the movies where people have guns, or swords, or knives – when everything’s just super cool slow-motion, and nobody is really afraid. ‘Cause it’s just acting. And besides, they don’t look afraid. They just look angry. It seems like it would be nice, to just be angry.

That foster family gives her up two weeks later, and Sarah throws all her things into a garbage bag and goes. She sits in the backseat of the social worker’s car. She imagines that she had a gun, or a sword, or a knife, and instead of having to sit there and say _uh-huh uh-huh_ over and over this was a fight and she could win it.

Only she’s bigger, in her head. She’s bigger and she doesn’t look all the way like herself and hey, maybe, maybe she isn’t herself at all, maybe she’s someone else. And she has a gun. She’s really good at using a gun, ‘cause she’s been learning how to do it her whole life. She has a pet scorpion, and they talk to each other. She isn’t afraid. She isn’t even a little bit afraid.

Then the car stops and Sarah realizes they’re there. Her new home.

 _They look like monkeys_ , says a voice over her shoulder, as the new foster family comes to greet her. _Stupid monkeys_. And that’s Helena.

Sarah moves from house to house but she keeps Helena with her, so she isn’t really alone. Helena lived in a convent for her whole life so she thinks that having a bed is great, and every kind of food is delicious. She and Sarah fight a lot, but Sarah always forgives her. Helena never really gets mad. The nuns used to get mad at her, _really_ mad, so she knows better. She knows that kids get scared.

When there are other kids around, and Sarah plays with them, she sometimes pretends that she’s Helena. But Helena is there, watching her, so it mostly just feels silly.

(Nice, though.)

(It feels good.)

(One time a guy tried to touch Helena and she sprained his finger and then – oh, she was in a bar, and she was drinking, and she danced with a cute boy, and then – she got one of the things you use to play pool, whatever that’s called, there was a pool table there and she got that and she broke the guy’s _arm_ , just for _touching her_ , and then she went to _jail_. Sarah could do that. Sarah could totally do that. Helena could teach her.)

Helena is there when the latest foster mother takes her in; she’s there because Sarah decided she would be, is imagining the way her hair would bounce as she follows in Sarah’s footsteps. She’s short, but she’s bigger than Sarah. The latest foster mother has a rifle but Helena knows how to use a rifle and also she’s good at what the movies call _hand to hand combat_ so Sarah knows she could take her. Sarah is fine.

She’s stopped telling people about Helena, though.

She used to.

But now mostly she doesn’t.

There’s another kid in the bedroom that’s supposed to be hers, and he’s small. Sarah doesn’t want to talk to him but Helena likes little kids so she drops her things on the bed and turns to him.

“Who’re you.”

“Hello,” says the boy. He’s lying on his bed, and he’s goggling at her upside-down. “I’m Felix. Are you my sister?”

“No,” Sarah says. “We’re just living in the same house. We’re gonna leave soon, and go somewhere else. Different places. And then we’re never gonna see each other again.”

“S says she’s keeping us,” says Felix stubbornly, but he’s already starting to cry. Dumb. Baby. Sarah throws herself on her bed and turns her back to him. She wants Helena to sit down on the bed next to her, but Helena won’t. It’s not fair. Sarah made her; she shouldn’t be upset at Sarah. She should just be happy for Sarah, forever and ever.

“Sorry,” she says, except it comes out mean.

“It’s okay,” says Felix anyways. “You had a long trip, right? That’s what S said.”

“Yeah,” Sarah says. The bed doesn’t creak at all, because Helena isn’t real, but Helena is sitting down next to her anyways. _It will be fine_ , she says.

 _Tell me a story_ , Sarah says.

 _Once, I was trapped in a prison_ , Helena says, _and there was no way out. But every day they gave me food, and the food had butter in it. So I saved the butter in the wall—_

_How’d you save it in the wall._

_There was a loose brick. Shh, I am telling story. I saved the butter in the wall, and—_

Felix is talking a little bit, but he thinks that Sarah’s tired and so eventually he stops talking. There’s a stone in Sarah’s stomach and she doesn’t really know why. In her brain Helena has broken the bars to her cell and she’s pulling herself out, one little bit at a time, and Sarah is lying here on the bed listening to the adults talk about her downstairs. Or maybe she isn’t listening to the adults at all. No, she isn’t, because Helena is still telling the story. It’s a nice story: Sarah knows exactly how it goes. Helena breaks free of the cell. She runs. She makes it out alive.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


End file.
